THE DAY IN WHICH I MOWED THE LAWN AND FOUND THAT I HAD HAD A CLOSE SHAVE.

Yesterday I cut my hair and today I cut the lawn. Several years ago I got sick of sweating under my mop of hair and started to get the barbers to cut it a lot shorter. Sadly I was the only person that liked this new style, but as I was the one that was suffering from sweat-head then frankly my dear I didn't give a damn. So several hair cuts later it dawned on me that I was paying a barber to shave my head with a gadget that I could buy at Argos. So I bought it from Argos and have been happily shaving my bonce ever since and so far the saving has been in the hundreds of pounds. I know most of my family think it makes me look like a thug but that is not a bad thing if other thugs think I look hard too. Over the last few months I trialled letting it grow and whilst my family preferred it (not Alison though who it appears had got used to the 'new' look) I hated it so yesterday I Cut it back again, sorry Mum.

Today the lawn got the cold steel treatment. Whilst the grass was not really deep it was badly cut by my hover-mower in November and it looked a mess. My parents and brother gave me a mower as a present and so I took the new mower out on to the lawn to see what it could do. It did great and now the unsightly tufts have all evened out, however the lawn is riddled with moss and I need to treat it to bring it up to its best.

I then returned and as I walked through the living room Stephen stopped me and asked to look at my head. Well I assumed I had bits of grass caught in my hair and simply wiped my head off. He still insisted that I show him my head, particularly the back of it so I conceded to his request. "Noooooooo", he said dramatically, whipping himself up out of his comfy sofa and onto his feet as if a red hot poker had just shot up from the cushions below. "No way, what have you done?!".
  Now the last time anyone had acted in this way and uttered the self same words must have been back in the late 70's. I can remember it really clearly, I was in a Store in Leamington Spa (working) where I was discussing something with a colleague. I had been building a display which involved the use of a knife to cut the boxes appropriately. In the 80's the 'Safety knife' was invented, this had a retractable blade so you couldn't cut yourself, idiot proof, unfortunately the 80's hadn't happened yet and there was I (the definition of 'an idiot') standing there with my knife (blade most definitely not retractable) firmly in my hand. What I didn't comprehend was that the said hand was up in front of my jaw as I spoke. then the person talking to me said.... "No way, what have you done?!".  Closely followed by "get the knife away from your lip", but it was too late as I had unwittingly been placing the knife's blade against my lower lip and as I pulled it away there was a gush of rich red blood pouring down my chin as my lips parted like the red (very red) sea. Lips, it seems, have quite a tension on them and this lip split in two with both sides enthusiastically going their separate ways. It was not a pleasant feeling and I have to confess to feeling quite faint.  I'm not bad with blood normally but I am a lot better if it is someone else's. About 10 years ago in the Brighton store a young child was running around like a child that was not under the control of it's parent, oh yes that's right, he wasn't under the control of his parent, 'cause his mum was too busy nattering to a friend. Anyway the managers office opened immediately out on to the main shop floor where all the great unwashed did their shopping and just as I opened the door this lad run into the walking stick of a poor elderly and very frail lady. Well she went down with a thud, her head hitting the floor hard, I rushed over to her but like my lip the skin on the skull is very taught and it split open and blood started to seep out at a constant rate of supply. I stuck both my hands under the head to lift her and also to try to stem the blood flow. A colleague brought some tissue paper to me and whilst I held this an ambulance was called and the in-store first aider too. This person was our Personnel Manager and had recently passed her St Johns first aid course so even though calls for a 'doctor in the building' came to nothing I felt she would be by my side at any moment. I sat on the floor next to the managers office with this poor lady bleeding through all the compression that I could give her, the blood, as it always does, seemed twice the amount than it probably really was. It trickled through my fingers and spread on to the floor. Then in the distance I saw her, at last my first aider was on her way. As she approached I felt there was something not quite right about her, the nearer she got to us the paler she seemed to become. With each and every step towards the scene of the accident her skin tone's hue became more faint and a definite ill pallor befell her. She was, to give her fair due, coming with some haste, she got nearer and nearer and nearer and nearer and paler and paler and as she came along side me she mumbled "I'm sorry I can't handle blood!" and swiftly disappeared into the managers office not to be seen again until I was finally relieved by the paramedics. My first aider sat in the managers office feeling every inch nauseous at the thought of all that blood. Now I feel obliged to do what all those fly on the wall documentaries do and put the following words on the screen titles...The old lady made a full recovery from her injuries - honestly.

So, yes,    Stephen jumps up and says "No way, what have you done?!" then, rather uncharitably I thought, started to laugh and laugh. "You're bald!" he interjected, "you oaf you've shaved a whole chunk of your hair off" and continued to laugh very much at my expense.
Well I do recall that whilst cutting my hair yesterday that the long hair was putting up a good fight and in the course of the Infractions the plastic devise that sets the cut depth jumped off the machine and where I thought I had 'pulled up' just in time the evidence now suggested otherwise! Ooops. So now I have a pleasant little 'air-strip where you could land a microlight quite comfortably on the back of me head. I might have to wear a hat out for a few weeks until things recover a little! Stephen kindly took a photo of the disaster to show me then promptly sent a copy to his sister so she too could share the joke, we are a very supportive family.





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